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photo: Comedian Klin the Drunk as a Policemean
The sleepy community of Ikirun, headquarters of Ifelodun local government area of Osun State, was yesterday thrown into pandemonium following killing of two brothers by policemen at a checkpoint.
Following a reprisal attack by the mob, the police constable who fired the shot over a demand of N20 which the motorcyclist refused to part with, was also murdered while some policemen, including the Divisioanl Police Officer (DPO) in the area were seriously injured.
In the attack, a policeman was killed while the two police stations located in the town were torched.
The DPO for Ikirun police division, Abiodun Alabi, who was injured during the attack, was, at press time, on danger list at the state General Hospital, Asubiaro, Osogbo...
Police commissioner, Olusegun Solomon, confirmed the incident.
It was gathered that the two brothers, Lukman Adesina and Taiwo Adesina, were shot dead by a police corporal at a checkpoint along Osogbo road following their refusal to part with N20 bribe.
It was gathered that the police were mounting road block on Ikirun-Osogbo road when motorcyclists carrying two other passengers was waved down and his refusal to stop made the policeman to fire the motorcyclist which killed killed him instantly and wounded the two passengers.
It was gathered that the three men on the motor bike were children of the same parents. Those killed by the police were identified as Likman Adesina and Taiwo Adesina. Following the killing, the people around gathered and attacked the Motor Traffic Department (MTD) in Ikirun and the police station.
The mob also killed the police constable while the station was razed.
It was gathered that while the mob attacked the police station, some of the officers at the station took to their heels.
Some of them were not all as lucky as they were wounded by the mob. The divisional police officer (DPO), whose name was given as Abiodun Alabi, was rushed to the State General Hospital, Asubiaro where he was receiving treatment.
The state commissioner of police confirmed the incident but said that two people, a civilian and a police officer, died in the incident.
He said that though he did not have the details of the incident, the policeman shot the motorcyclist while the mob killed the police constable in return.
The CBN Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi has emerged as the 2010 Silverbird Man of the Year. He was voted enmasse by the Nigerian people
by text messaging..
Most Nigerians who received the news, believe his choice as the Silverbird Man of the Year was based on his frankness and fearlessness in policy formulation and ,more importantly ,his recent revelation about how twenty five percent of the national budget is spent on federal legislators. Other contenders for the prestigious award in 2010 were Aliko Dangote (Chairman Dangote Group) ,Funke Osibodu (CEO Union Bank Plc, Olusegun Aganga (Minister of Finance), Ahmadu Giade (NDLEA Chairman) & Funke Opeke (CEO Main One Cable).
The Silverbird Man of the Year was initiated in 2006 to celebrate outstanding and extraordinary Nigerians.
The newly appointed editor of Russian Vogue has courted controversy by putting Vladimir Putin's alleged mistress on her first front cover.
The January 2011 issue. features former rhythmic Olympic gymnast Alina Kabayeva, 27, wearing a £21,000 gold Balmain dress with her hands on her hips.
Viktoria Davydova’s decision to give her such prominence in the magazine is one that is likely to irritate the strong man Russian prime minister who has scornfully denied a newspaper report that he has left his wife Ludmila, with whom he has two daughters, for Miss Kabayeva.
While there is no substantive evidence that Mr Putin, 58, is romantically linked to Miss Kabayeva, who also happens to be an MP for Mr Putin's ruling United Russia party, the alleged affair has long been the hottest gossip topic among Russia's elite.
Katsav, who could now face years in prison, had denied charges he twice raped an aide when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and molested or sexually harassed two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president.
But a three-judge panel said his testimony had been “riddled with lies.”
“When a woman says no, she means no,” the panel said in its ruling.
Katsav was also convicted of obstructing justice, for trying to confer with one complainant about her testimony to police.
The ashen-faced 65-year-old had no comment for reporters as he was spirited out of Tel Aviv District Court by a scrum of relatives, attorneys and bodyguards.
One of his lawyers, Avigdor Feldman, criticised the unanimous verdict for ignoring “all of the doubts” about the women’s accounts and said Mr. Katsav will appeal the ruling at the Supreme Court.
State Attorney, Moshe Lador, praised Israel’s legal system, saying that few countries would have prosecuted their head of state for such crimes..
“Positions of power cannot grant immunity to criminals, however senior they may be,” he said.
“This is a sad day for the state of Israel and its residents,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party of which Katsav is a veteran member, said in a statement after the verdict.
“Today, the court conveyed two clear-cut messages, that all are equal before the law and that every woman has exclusive rights to her body,” Netanyahu said.
Rape carries a minimum prison term of four years and a maximum of 16 years in Israel. Moshe Negbi, legal analyst for Israel Radio, told Reuters any sentences handed down to Katsav for the lesser charges would probably be served concurrently.
Disgrace
Though the scandal had forced Katsav’s early retirement in disgrace, it had little impact on Israeli government functions, as the presidency is largely ceremonial.
But the allegations against the Iranian-born leader, whose rise from the slums once served as a shining example for disadvantaged Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, stirred deep emotions in Israel, where the elite has traditionally been of European descent.
The verdict was dubbed an “earthquake” by one Israeli newspaper and welcomed by women’s groups that have long complained of lax attitudes to sexual harassment in workplaces.
Katsav, who is religiously observant, had cast himself as the victim of extortion and an ethnically-motivated “witch hunt.” Relatives said he would campaign to clear his name.
“This trial, where the judges rule according to their feelings, is not in keeping the ethics of Israel,” Katsav’s son, Boaz, told reporters.
“God willing, the whole nation will know that dad, the eighth president of the State of Israel, is innocent.”
Out of concern for the complainants’ privacy, much of the trial had taken place behind closed doors. Some commentators predict Katsav, should he appeal, will argue that the Tel Aviv District Court proceedings were not transparent enough.
Katsav immigrated with his family to Israel in 1951. At the age of 24, he became the country’s youngest mayor and went on to hold a number of Likud cabinet posts. Parliament elected him president in 2000 in a surprise victory over Shimon Peres, Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning elder statesman.
Peres succeeded Katsav as president, an appointment observers say has restored dignity to the post.
The eruption of the Katsav affair had amplified corruption scandals that brought down Israel’s then premier, Ehud Olmert. Hosting Olmert in Moscow in late 2006, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president at the time, quipped before TV cameras that Katsav “didn’t look like a guy who could be with 10 women.”
Hon.Patrick Obahiagbon on Pa Enahoro
Certainly the fall of another titan.
Chief Anthony Enahoro's modus vivendi, whilst he peregrinated through this will-o-the-wisp of a three dimensional world, resonated with a divine halo of an iconic personage who was propelled by the PIRKEAVOTHIAN apothegm which urges man to realize "that the day is short and the work is great, " No wonder that from a very young age, he engaged in self abnegation and mortification of the flesh in a spartan, clinical and cerebral bid to salvage the Nigerian project even at the expense of his health infrastructure.He ceaselessly fulminated against vagabonds in power whose primus mobile had philistinic anchorage on a depreciably mindless crave for vacuous hedonism and ingratiating political megalomania. He must have been viscerally pained to note while he was at the departure lounge, that the ship of the Nigerian State was still nosediving and sliding into an eschewable oxbow lake and cataract and he must finally have wondered if the zoning debate currently going on is not another egregious insult by our elitist political class on the pauperized,sissfied and ossified sensibilities and sensitivities of our lumpen proletariat. The only way we can honour this great man who gave his all for Nigeria is for all progressive forces to extricate themselves from the arms of morpheus, with a view to continously dymistify,explode and pulverize the machivellian,mephistophelian,primitively accumulative and rabidly sybaritic propensities of our political class be it at the level of executive suzerainty or parliamentary olympian aloofness.
Adieu Pa Anthony Enahoro!!
Hon. Patrick Obahiagbon..
According to the end of tenure asset declaration document which was declared before Abubakar S. Umar, a Justice of the High Court of Justice in Abuja on 26 November, 2008, Mr. Ribadu lost N1.357 million worth of assets during his five-year tenure as chairman of EFCC.
The documents, which were admitted by a three-man panel of the Code of Conduct Tribunal led by Justice Constance Momoh in December 2009, show that Mr. Ribadu was worth N27.94 million by March 2002, before he became the EFCC chairman.
For public scrutiny
Details of the document show that before Mr. Ribadu became the EFCC chair, he had 187 cows valued at N7.5 million, a residential quarters in Yola worth N4.5 million, and a N10 million land in Abuja. He also had a Honda Accord car valued at N2 million, a Honda CRV valued at N2.3 million and N1.6 million and £200 cash in two local banks and a London bank respectively.
The end of tenure asset declaration by Mr. Ribadu shows that while he was leaving EFCC in 2008, he had $8,064 in two local banks, sourced from his allowances, a plot of land at Katampe Hills in Abuja valued at N2 million, a residential quarters in Yola valued at N5 million, and a N200,000 home furniture. He also had a N2.3 million Honda Accord car bought in 2006...
He, however, lost 67 cows and was left with 120 cows valued at N5 million.
Mr. Ribadu, who was finally relieved of his duty as chairman of EFCC, was prosecuted half way by the late Umaru Musa Yar'Adua-led government at the Code of Conduct Tribunal over allegations that he did not declare his assets before taking up the EFCC job.
In late 2008, he went on a self-imposed exile after alleging threats to his life, but the case against him was dropped at the Code of Conduct Tribunal by the federal government after the death of Mr. Yar'Adua and the subsequent removal of Michael Aondoakaa as the attorney general of the federation and minister of justice.
Adetokunbo Kayode, who took over the Justice ministry from Mr. Aaondoaka, had before the dissolution of the cabinet by President Goodluck Jonathan, reviewed the case against Mr. Ribadu and directed that the case should be withdrawn. He later filed a Nolle Prosequi to discontinue the case.
A case of vendetta
Mr. Ribadu, who confirmed the validity of the documents, described the case the government had against him as vendetta by the Yar'Adua administration, which was filled with men he had put up for prosecution while he was in office as EFCC chairman.
He said that although the Goodluck Jonathan's administration withdrew the case and made it easy for him to return to the country, he would have preferred a logical conclusion of the case.
"My lawyers already filed that the case be struck out following the admission of my 2002 asset declaration forms by the Justice Constance Momoh-led panel in December 2009," he said.
The return of Mr. Ribadu and others who went into exile was one of the achievements listed by President Jonathan as one of the tangible achievements of his administration.
On his Facebook page on Christmas Eve the president wrote:
"Last Christmas, several exiles such as Nuhu Ribadu and Nasir El-Rufai, etc., spent Christmas away from their friends and families. But this Christmas, they have the liberty to be with their friends and families in Nigeria. Plus, there are NO Nigerian political exiles outside Nigeria this Christmas."
Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the Central Bank governor, has been named as the world Central Bank Governor of the Year by a global financial intelligence magazine, The Banker, a publication of the Financial Times of London. Mr. Sanusi is also the magazine’s African Central Bank governor of the year.
Brian Caplen, editor of the magazine, noted that few candidate names can generate an overall consensus on judging panels and yet, when it came to finding the best global Central Bank governor of the year, Mr Sanusi was chosen unanimously.
Mr Caplen stresses that Mr Sanusi embarked on a radical anti-corruption campaign aimed at saving 24 banks on the brink of collapse and pressed for the managers involved in the most blatant cases of corruption to be charged and, in the case of two senior bankers, convicted...
In a release signed by the Country Representative, Nigeria of The Banker Magazine, Kunle Ogedengbe, the magazine noted in its 2011 January Edition, which will also be distributed at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, that in the last 18 months that since Mr Sanusi has been in office, he has salvaged a crumbling Nigerian financial sector, including implementing reforms that have put Africa’s most promising market back on the map for investors globally.
Two months into his governorship, Mr Sanusi embarked on the bailout of Afribank, Intercontinental Bank, Union Bank, Oceanic Bank and Finbank and dismissed their chief executive officers in a move designed to show that banking is no longer business as usual but institutions that must serve the economy as a whole. He also injected about N627 billion into nine banks to save them from imminent collapse.
Another reform of the banking sector introduced by Mr Sanusi has been to limit the tenure of bank chief executive officers to a maximum of 10 years. They will have to leave office at the end of their term regardless of their record. This policy has already led to change of leadership at UBA, Zenith and Skye banks.
Mr Caplen added that the reforms initiated by Mr Sanusi have been hailed as necessary to sanitise the banking industry and that observers have argued that, had these reforms not been initiated, Nigeria would have entered into another round of banking distress.
The Banker, a publication of Financial Times Newspaper which is regarded as the most influential newspaper in the world, is a global financial intelligence magazine published since 1926. It is the definitive publication that provides guide to bank ratings and analysis globally and the definitive reference on international banking for finance experts, governments, chief finance officers, CEOs, Central Bank governors, finance ministers, and other decision makers globally.
A good day to you all I pray that this email meets you in good health and proseprity amen.
The Simplicity of Decision.
Our lives are classified as decisons based on time intervals , whether you are awake ,asleep, at work .Your Life is a continous array of decisions.
I became humbled recently, not because I was not humble but becasue I was unaware that I was humble.Within this ignorant humility I made "decisions" I was not proud of.
In other words you might say, I became humbled because I failed to see the humility of my ways and God in his everlasting kindness who resists the proud but gives grace to the humble showed me that the knowledge of my humility was absent since i did not know that I had It.
As I realised this "lack of humility about my humility" It became clear to me that ignorance is no justification for unrighteosness.
Ignorance exists because we do not search for its corolary which is knowledge,wisdom and understanding.
I recently must confess I was evidently ignorant of the Catholic church and Its strong influence on the Church of Christ until the Pope died.
Perceptions based on my ignorance to seek truth on this matter only came to light when the Pope of the Catholic Church died.
My theories of Mary the Mother of Jesus as being unacceptable have all gone in smoke !
Pentecostal & Evangelistical leaders in droves appeared on CNN and other news media to praise and approve of the Pope's contribution to christendom.My humilty therefore has increased because of my lack of knowledge of something I decided long ago as not negotiable !
All that remains is the fact that Who am I to Judge ? A friend of mine told me recently that she felt that God would in the end of the age forgive everyone and in my foolish humility I said " Impossible ! "
but hold on, who am I to judge again?
Am I the creator ? I am a mere creation created on to good works,saved completely by grace lest i should boast and therefore judge .
To his master everyone stands ! for this same reason Christ died not for the righteous but for sinners, therefore I am to work out my own Salvation with the God of "Love" and "Fear" with fear and trembling !
Is he unfair if he says "I will have mercy on whom I will ? " but a broken and contrite heart he will not reject !
If I spent a fraction of the time I spend on my pleasures and just generally amusing myself ignorant of the pleasures of God's purpose then should i be blamed if I perish for lack of knowledge ?
This is the fact that we miss, the point that we fail to note, "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God but God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whomsoever believeth in him may not perish but have eternal life."
I am not presenting this topic based on this fact that happened to me but I want to relate it so that know it or not , seek it or not ,like it or not ,God's purpose is inevitable,Jesus is Lord and he is coming soon.
If I am humble without knowing it then I have no knowledge and then no wisdom and then no understanding ?
If I have Faith that can move mountains and I dont know it, What good is it to me ?
Ok If I know in part and I prophesy in part and have faith in part ? How will it profit me ? .
Love claims to be perfect ,It claims this becasue God is love.
The decision process is saddled within the Corporate world as a predictive and analytical process, of a magnitude beyond the early civilizations of man.
Yet we see no differences in the basic Civic and Social Responsibilities of man to man.
No improvements towards the enveloping chaos that threatens to engulf man as we are today.
Will it ever stop ?
The greatest thing that God gave us as commandments boiled down to ,
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy might with all thy mind and with all thy strength and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" .
Someone asked Jesus this question , who is my neighbour and Jesus answered .... we know the story of the Good samaritan.
Is it possible for me to love God with the ALL that I can muster and still be able to love my neighbour as myself ? Where can that kind of love come from ?
According to the commander it is possible .
I reason that this is only possible because God postures that to say we love God that we have not seen, means that we must love the person we have seen .
I can not debate on who these persons are but honestly, It is intrinsincally not people we like or we know but people that others reject and spite because of who they are.
In our daily decisions , we act like the top management of the corporate world . We base our decisions on what we have seen ,heard, percieved etc
how often do we base our decision on LOVE.?
Love as It is is not the starry eyed approach by Romeo and Juliet but the kind like Ist Corrinthians 13th chapter (one of the "luckiest" verses of the bible).
God is love and as we are trying to attain this love, a suitable practice would be to try to attain the characteristics of his love.
1 Cor 13:4-7
Love is patient,
love is kind.
It does not envy,
It does not boast,
It is not proud.
It is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.
Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
NIV
The simplicity of commandments is in their obedience, To obey is better than sacrifice .He who commands wants his commandment achieved .
He will not give you anything to carry that is beyond your ability or his.
The simplicity of Decision Theory is in putting love in your relationships.Even physicists have come to the realisation that the only true law of the Universe is the Relationship theory against even the Relativity theory.
Relationships are the bedrock of existence,finding,sustaining and keeping them are based on chance,work and Choices.
Choice, decsions and purpose.Man proposes choices God does the dispensation.
If you have a decision to make today,if it is hard ,easy difficult or just plain confusing all you have to do is to Do it in Love ..
I gaurantee you that it is the simplest and the best decision you can make.
God bless you
Frank
President Obama, long criticized by many in his own party for lacking appropriate passion, delivered a blunt and confrontational message to his liberal critics during a press conference today.Faced with increasing criticism from liberals over his decision to compromise with Republicans on a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, Obama openly chastised the party's base -- warning them of being "sanctimonious" and reminding them that "this country was founded on compromise"...
He also rejected the idea that he had failed to make good on a series of promises he made to the left (and the country) during the 2008 campaign. "There is not a single thing that I said I would do that I have not done or tried to do," Obama asserted.
Obama, to be fair, didn't only single out Democrats for criticism. He compared negotiating with Republicans to negotiating with hostage takers and said he only did so because of the danger that the hostage -- aka the American public -- would be harmed.
(You can check out the full press conference and our live blog of the proceedings if you missed a moment.)
Taken broadly, this press conference was a true rarity for Obama: the president as populist -- and an angry one at that.
The president repeatedly sought to frame the compromise on tax cuts as a choice between playing politics and looking out for the American people. "My number one priority is to do what's right for the American people," Obama said at the start of the press conference.
The image of a visibly irritated -- if not outright angry -- Obama was a stunning contrast to cool, calm and collected persona that he has long cultivated.
Allies of the president insisted his tone was justified and winning -- that he was channeling the frustration of the American people with a government unable to solve big problems.
But, anger is a dangerous emotion in politics.
Used tactically, it can help convey a sense of shared concern/upset with the American people. Used less skillfully, it can make a politician look small and petty.
The best -- and the worst -- of the anger equation can be found in former president Bill Clinton.
At his best, Clinton used his anger to channel the best of the best southern populist politicians -- turning an issue into an "us versus them" argument that he almost always won.
At his worst, Clinton would turn his fire onto the process itself -- the media, the rules of Congress etc. -- which almost invariably ensured political defeat either of the temporary or permanent variety.
Ladies PLEASE your Lives are literally in your HANDS ! USE Them, BREAST CANCER IS NOT A RESPECTER OF PERSONS !
The Comrade Governor of Edo State, Mr. Adams Oshiomole has reportedly lost his wife of many years, Mrs. Clara Oshiomole to breast Cancer. the woman
who was last seen in public
some months back, died of the disease according to a source.
.Mrs. Clara Oshiomole, the wife of GovernorAdams Oshiomhole of Edo State has passed on. Vanguard uncovered that the deceased died after a battle with breast cancer.
Further inquest divulged that she died this morning, in Abuja with only about some days to her daughter’s wedding.
The 54 year old Edo First Lady had abstained from public functions because she was receiving treatment overseas and only returned to Nigeria some days ago for the daughter’s wedding slated for 19th of December .
Sadly as Liz Edwards below there are rumours of separation with the Comrade Governor before her passing.May her Soul Rest in Peace .
Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former presidential candidate, succumbs to cancer at 61
Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Sen. John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate's marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday. She was 61.
Her family confirmed the death, saying Mrs. Edwards was surrounded by relatives when she died at her Chapel Hill, N.C., home. A family friend said John Edwards was present. Two family friends said Monday that Mrs. Edwards' cancer had spread to her liver and that doctors had advised against further medical treatment.
She posted a Facebook message to friends the same day, saying, "I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope."
"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that," she added.
Mrs. Edwards spent much of her life as a little-known lawyer and mother. That changed when her husband became a U.S. senator, presidential candidate and Democratic nominee for vice president, propelling her into the spotlight as a smart, plain-spoken wife and key adviser to her husband.
She later became a figure of sympathy as she battled breast cancer and dealt with her husband's infidelity. Her public image shifted again in recent years: the scorned woman whose husband fathered a child with another woman.
She and John Edwards separated early this year but remained close.
From JOE EFFIONG, Uyo
The wife of Akwa Ibom State governor, Mrs Ekaette Unoma Akpabio, is generally called the “Mother Theresa of our time.” Even her husband introduces her as such at official functions.
One of the widow receiving her gift from Her Excellency, Mrs. Akpabio
The title may be a little too ambitious if not exaggeration, but in Nigeria, one needs to blow own trumpet. And if Akpabio is blowing the trumpet of the wife, then it is not too far-fetched. The wife may not be the renowned and the late Mother Theresa yet, but she is trying. What the ambitious Family Life Enhancement Initiative which the governor’s wife is, providing accommodation and other forms of succor to the widows and other less-privileged .
So far, she has provided 31 widows and homeless persons with a two bedroom bungalow each by her Family Life Enhancement Initiative, and five of the houses built under the Shelter Support Programme of the pet project which were recently inaugurated by Mrs Akpabio for Miss Offiong Bassey, a treated homeless leper in Udung Adatang, Udung Uko local government area; Miss Iquo Enyiekung, a widow and mother of four in Uya Oron, oron local government area and Mrs. Joana Victor Bright, a 33-year old widow and mother with four children in Okorotte, Eastern Obolo local government area...
Others who also benefitted from the programme are Mrs. Atim Akpan Ekong, a widow with eight children in Obotme, Ini local government area and Mrs. Iquo Sunday Udo, a widow and mother of eight children in Afia Nsit Attai, Nsit Ubium local government area...
Mrs Akpabio said during the formal opening of the houses that providing the roof over the heads of the widows and other homeless persons was done out of her interest to lessen the burden of homeless persons in the State.
Mrs. Akpabio stated at the inauguration ceremonies, “Now that the problem of lack of decent accommodation has been solved for the beneficiaries, they have one thing less to worry about and can deploy their resources to other beneficial purposes for themselves and their families”.
She also used the opportunity of the commissioning of the houses to challenge mothers state to expose their children who may be involved in kidnapping and other crimes to acquire wealth. She said that there was no where a mother would worship a child who is a kidnapper, simply because they bring gifts acquired through illegal activities, and expects such a child to refrain from criminal acts.
Mrs. Akpabio also called on parents to take advantage of the free education policy of the state government to send their children to school and be prepared to register when the voters’ registration exercise would commences.
“Make sure your children go to schoo. Education can make them to shun thuggery, violence and kidnapping. Mothers open your mouths and talk to your children to shun crime. Reject suspicious gifts from your children so that those involved in kidnapping can stop. Even though they are your children, you have to discreetly report them to the Police”, Mrs Akpabio admonished.
The beneficiaries of the Shelter Support Programme of Mrs. Akpabio showed overwhelming emotions of joy and gratefulness for the gift of the houses. In particular, Miss Offiong Bassey, the former Leprosy Patient who was stranded at the Leprosy Hospital , Ekpene Obom in Etinan because she did not have home to go to after her treatment, praised Mrs. Akpabio highly for coming to her rescue with the two bedroom bungalow, calling her a friend, mother and anchor in her life. Miss Bassey also commended a councilor in Udung Uko Local Government Council, Mr. Etim Effiong Okon for donating the land in which the house is located after her blood relations had refused her space for the project.
The inauguration exercise drew comments from Government officials and other personalities who hail from localities where the houses were built for the widows, with Chief (Mrs.) Grace Anwana, Akwa Ibom State Head of Civil Service, speaking in Oron; Mrs. Eunice Thomas, the Commissioner for Women Affairs, in Okoroette; Chief Bassey Inuaeyen, a politician, in Obotme and Mr. Onofiok Luke, Speaker National Youth Parliament, in Afia Nsit Attai, all extolling the motherly concern of Mrs. Akpabio to build the houses.
Nominees announced for FIFA Ballon d’Or gala 2010
The contenders for this year’s FIFA Ballon d’Or award for the best player of 2010 and for the FIFA Women’s WorldPlayer of the Year 2010 award were announced on Monday during a pressconference held at the headquarters of the sports daily L’Equipe in Paris, inwhich Jérôme Valcke, FIFA Secretary General, François Morinière, CEO of FranceFootball, Jean-Pierre Papin, a former winner of the Ballon d’Or, and ChristianKarembeu, a member of FIFA’s Football Committee, took part.
In alphabetical order, the male nominees are Andrés Iniesta (Spain), Lionel Messi (Argentina) and Xavi (Spain), whileFatmire Bajramaj (Germany), Marta (Brazil) and Birgit Prinz (Germany) willcontest the women’s award.
The candidates for the newly created FIFA World Coach of the Year for Men’s Football award and the FIFA World Coachof the Year for Women’s Football award were also announced. The contenders arethe following: Vicente del Bosque (Spain/Spanish national team), Pep Guardiola(Spain/FC Barcelona) and José Mourinho (Portugal/FC Internazionale and RealMadrid CF) in the men’s category, and Maren Meinert (Germany/German U-20national team) Silvia Neid (Germany/German national team) and Pia Sundhage(Sweden/USA national team) in the women’s category...
All of these nominees were confirmed after a poll in which the captains and head coaches of the men’s and women’snational teams as well as international media representatives selected byFrance Football voted for candidates. The votes from each of the three groupscounted for one-third to obtain the final result.
The winners will be revealed at the first FIFA Ballon d’Or gala as part of a televised ceremony at the ZurichKongresshaus on 10 January 2011, during which the FIFA FIFPro World XI and theFIFA Puskás Award for the most beautiful goal of the year will also beannounced for the second year running. The online vote for fans on FIFA.com forthe FIFA Puskás Award has now reached the 1 million vote landmark, with oneweek to go until the poll closes at noon CET on 13 December. The FIFAPresidential Award and the FIFA Fair Play Award will also be presented duringthe gala.
FIFA.COM
In an earlier Twist .Next said the DPO is Kayode Ojaleponwa Vanguard Newspapers claimed it was Mohammed Babamala
Story:
A middle-aged man, Femi Best, was on Sunday morning, allegedly shot dead by the Divisional Police Officer of the Olosan Police Station, Mushin, Kayode Ojaleponwa.
According to an eye witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the incident happened about 5.30am when Mr Best, who was driving his light blue Nissan Odyssey SUV, ran into the car conveying the police boss and his team at the Fadeyi Bus Stop. Mr Ojaleponwa, dressed in plain clothes, and driving his tinted Honda Accord car, pursued Mr Best as he drove away. Two other plain clothes police officers were also in the car with the police boss. Mr Best, also known as Femi Yahoo, was said to have driven to Onipanu and parked in front of the Onipanu Police Station. Persons at the scene allege that the police boss, on reaching there, brought out his gun and shot Mr Best in the head several times.
Mob reaction
Mr Best’s death caused pandemonium at the police station as heavily armed youth from the Agunbiade area of Shomolu invaded the station in protest of the murder. They also unleashed terror on commuters and other business owners in the area and held police officers hostage for close to one hour before the Rapid Response Squad, from the Alade and Bariga Police Stations, mobilised and disarmed the youth. “About 6.00am, we heard gun shots and the youth, numbering about one thousand, were moving from Agunbiade to Onipanu,” said Tokyo Jide, a resident of Shomulu. “They were chanting war songs that the DPO of the Olosan Police Station had killed Femi Yahoozee. Femi is a well known ‘Yahoo Man’ (Internet scammer) in Shomolu and he also belongs to the Eiye Cult (a secret confraternity). Femi’s girlfriend, who was with him in his jeep when the DPO shot him, said the police car chased them from Mushin down to Onipanu Police Station. She said it was the DPO that shot Femi several times.”
According to Mr Jide, the victim’s girl friend informed his friends and the cultists mobilised and come to the police station. “When the youth came, they saw Femi in a pool of his own blood and the police officers at the station tried to calm the youth that they were not the ones who shot Femi, but the youth will not be calmed,” he said. “They wanted to burn down the station, but the RRS police men arrived the scene and started shooting and throwing [tear gas] canisters into the air. They were able to free the hostage but peace is yet to be restored to Onipanu because the youth said they must revenge the death of their friend.”
Containing the situation
About ten patrol vans, with heavily armed police officers, have been placed at the troubled spot. Police officers have cordoned off the station, while movement in and out of the Onipanu Bus Stop have been restricted. A senior police officer at the scene, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Mr Ojaleponwa has been detained. “The DPO who shot the man has been arrested but I cannot tell you his name, because the case is under investigation,” he said. “Our concern now is to maintain law and order as the youth have threatened to burn down all the police stations at Shomolu. So we have beefed up security. People should not take the laws into their hands because it will cause more problem for the country.”
Frank Mba, the spokesperson for the Lagos Police Command, said the police is investigating the incident. “An officer attached to the command, accused of being the author of the crime, has been arrested and currently assisting investigators with the on-going investigation,” he said. “The body of the deceased has been deposited in a government morgue for autopsy. A team of senior police officers from the Command, led by the CP (Commissioner of Police), Marvel Akpoyibo, has since visited the scene of the incident. While commiserating with the family of the deceased, the Command wishes to reassure all concerned that the investigation into the incident will be swift, discreet and transparent.”
Mr Best is survived by a wife and kids.
http://234next.com/csp/cms/sites/Next/Home/5650196-146/story.csp
Story Number 2:
He was shot severally at his head and abdomen by the Police officer who have been chasing him from an unknown destination. The officer eventually accosted him at Onipanu Police Station before sending him to the great beyond.
The reasons behind the shooting has remained a puzzle to all, including three occupants of the Honda Odessy space bus both the deceased and his friends were in before the incident took place. Up till the time of filling this report, they could not provide comprehensive reasons why they were being chased by a tinted glassed Toyota Camry car before they approached Onipanu bus stop.
It was gathered that Femi had attended a party late Saturday night, in company of his younger brother and two other women, and on their way back, they lifted two other people whom they later dropped off. They also picked up two other friends whom they dropped at Mushin.
The deceased elder brother, Olawole Olayiwola told Crime Alert that after his brother noticed a Toyota Camry tailing him from Jibowu Bus_stop and the car was also flashing his headlight indicating that he should stop, he couldn’t stop because it was still very early in the morning and they day was dark.
“ The glass of the tailing car was tinted and they could not see the face of the occupant, but Femi and the rest, decided to ignore the sign and they kept on moving.
The pressures were much and they decided to stop at the Onipanu Police Station but, unknown to them, the occupant of that vehicle who happened to be the DPO of Olosho police Station in Mushin, alighted first and ran over my brother who was still inside his car and without any comment, shot him severally from outside and the bullet pierced the drivers door, hit my bother at the left abdomen and on his head.
At that point, other occupants of the car bolted for safety and when they returned, Femi had already passed away. Ever since, I have been trying to decipher the reason behind the shooting. I could not. You can see how terrible policemen could be. I want the authorities to ask him why he killed my brother. I doubt if they knew themselves before now. Often we have seen the police parade suspects of any sort on the television; we want them to ask this DPO to tell us why he shot my brother dead”, he lamented.
The death of Femi Best has sparked off series of violent protests within Shomolu Local Government Area of the State and the State House of Assembly in Alausa, Ikeja. Angry youths in the area are using the opportunity to express their displeasure over the terrible manner at which the police in their area have being treating them.
The youths in their hundreds were said to have barricaded the road and demanded that the killer cop be handed over to them for instant justice.
A resident of the area, Wale Adebola, told Crime Alert that the area have suffered massive police intimidation and killing for too long and nobody is saying anything about it. “ This is one killing too many and we must stand against it. We have suffered too much from this policemen working at Onipanu, Alade and Pedro Stations.
Just two weeks ago, an Okada rider was killed by a drunken police officer from Alade police Station. He and the occupant of his motorcycle were shot , but he died and the occupant survived.
After that, the police attempted labeling them as armed robbers, before their family revolted. You can’t pass through the Onipanu area at night, because the policemen will harass you and some times, they will intimidate you and take all your belongings. If they find laptop or blackberry phone with you, they will seize it and when you go to their DPO’s, they will refer you back to the officer.
It is so painful and the authorities have to checkmate their activities. At present we are more scared of the police than armed robbers, because they are not friendly to us at all.”
We are currently embarking on peaceful protests, in other to draw the attention of the authorities to our plight. Today we were at the State House of Assembly and we have given the police two weeks ultimatum to fish out the killer of Femi or we will be forced to be violent. I learnt the police officer involved have been arrested and I am sure the police might want to treat him fairly. They must understand that we are not kidding. This injustice must stop.”
Meanwhile, the Commissioner of Police Lagos State Command, Mr. Marvel Akoyibo, yesterday paid a condolence visit to the deceased family at Alafia lane Shomolu, Lagos and he assured that the command will do its best to unravel the circumstances surrounding the killing. He also said that he will not condone any act of indiscipline within its officers and whoever uses the firearm wrongly will be on his own.
Well who killed Femi Best ? Next has finally corrected their statement IT is Mohammad Babamala
DSM Condemns The Killing Of Femi Best , Calls For Prosecution Of DPO
Jews as High Technology Entrepreneurs and Managers
Jews have traditionally been seen as prominent in such
industries as finance, merchandising, apparel, textiles, entertainment, media, and publishing. And in most of them, Jews were true pioneers. They
played leading roles as those industries emerged on the scene.
Their disproportionate importance to the contemporary world of 24/7 competitive high technology is less well known, but they have flourished there as well. It plays to their strengths. High
technology demands a solid grounding in the underlying science or
engineering and that typically calls for college, and sometimes a
post graduate education. Demographically, Jews are better educated
than their peers. An earlier chapter pointed out the high levels of
Jewish enrollment at leading public and private universities.
The National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01 goes further. It points out that:
"More than half of all Jewish Adults (55%) received a college degree and a quarter (25%) earned a graduate degree." "The Comparable figures for the total U.S. population are 29% and 6%." As a result,
"More than 60% of all employed Jews are in one of the three highest status job categories: professional or technical (41%), management and executive (13%) and business and finance (7%)." "In
contrast, 46% of all Americans work in these three high status areas,
29% in professional or technical jobs, 12% in management and
executive positions and 5% in business and finance."
Jews also tend to be disproportionately entrepreneurial, working where they will succeed or fail based on their own efforts. Andrew Grove's decision to stop writing, and instead to pursue science,
illustrates the point. Judgments about writers are often subjective
while those about science are much less so. Grove wanted to work in a
field where he would be judged on his own performance. He chose
chemistry and got his Ph.D. After several years working with the best
and brightest at Fairchild Semiconductor, he left to become one of
the three founders of Intel.
Technology is a high risk meritocracy. While even the most talented people sometimes fail, and fortune can obliterate the most brilliant of plans; technology is not political. Relationships and
initial funding will carry a venture only so far. Ultimately it must
succeed or fail on its own merits in a volatile, highly competitive
arena. Such risky opportunities can be pursued in hospitable
climates, such as the United States, and in such environments, Jewish
entrepreneurs have done well. They:
- Created the world's largest and most valuable personal computer company; (Michael Dell, Dell Computers)
- facebook Social Network Owner zuckerberg
- Co-founded the world's most successful search engine; (Sergy Brin, Google)
- Head the world's largest software company; (Steve Ballmer, Microsoft)
- Co-founded and head the world's second largest software company; (Larry Ellison, Oracle)
- Co-founded, led and served as Chairman of the dominant microprocessor and memory chip company whose products drive most of today's personal computers; (Andrew Grove, Intel)
- Created the first "killer application" software which ignited demand for personal computers; (Mitch Kapor, Lotus 123)
- Served as Number 1 or 2 person in three of the world's four most valuable Internet companies according to a May 2004 Fortune study (Terry Semmel at Yahoo, Jeff Skoll at e-Bay and Barry
Diller at IAC) - Co-founded and head the communications protocol/chip company whose technology is the market leader in U.S. cell phones and is likely to be the world leader as the next generation cell
phone technology (3G) is adopted worldwide. (Irwin Jacobs,
Qualcomm).
And that is only the barest overview:
Dell: Michael Dell and Larry Ellison (of Oracle) share the distinction of being two of the most successful college dropouts in history. (Non-Jew Bill Gates is a third.) Dell quit the
University of Texas in 1985 when he was 19 years old to start Dell
Computer Corporation with a $1,000 stake. His idea was to "cut out
the middleman" by selling personal computers (PCs) directly to
customers.
Dell's combination of custom built computers, excellent product quality, superb customer service, outstanding production efficiency, and low prices created the world's largest computer manufacturing
company. In achieving that distinction, he took on IBM, Compaq,
Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, and many other PC makers, most of them much
bigger and better financed than Dell.
He is emblematic of the creative, determined nature of successful entrepreneurs. In the process, he made his company one of the most valuable in the world. In 1992, Dell became the youngest CEO in
history to earn a spot on the Fortune 500 when his Company had been
in existence for only eight years. With fiscal year 2005 sales of $53
billion, Dell has humbled most competitors. Despite the challenges
of rapid growth and competitive success, Dell and its founder are
consistently counted as among America's most respected.
The success has earned 40 year old Dell a fortune, sufficient, till his most recent birthday, to consistently place him among Fortune's "40 under 40." These are all young entrepreneurs, athletes
and entertainers who have achieved stellar success before reaching
age 40. With his wife, Dell has created the Michael & Susan Dell
Foundation, endowing it with more than $1 billion. Its focus is the
health, education, safety, care and development of children. Among
its recent commitments was $130 million to help boost high school
graduation and college attendance rates in Texas.
Google: Sergy Brin is the son of Russian Jewish emigrants who left the Soviet Union in 1979 to escape persecution. Sergy was six at the time. Mathematically inclined, he earned a
computer science degree from University of Maryland before entering
Stanford as a postgraduate student. There he met non-Jew, Larry Page,
also studying for his doctorate. Together, they developed a search
engine - called BackRub before they renamed it Google.
They dropped out of Stanford, rounded up $1 million from friends, family and angel venture investors and on September 7, 1998, launched Google. Less than ten years old, it is the most popular search
engine on the Web with more than eighty-two million users each month
accessing more than eight billion Web site pages (twice the
comparable 2004 figure). It employs more than 4,000 people and has
had a spectacular run up in its stock price to a value of roughly $80
billion in mid 2005.
Microsoft: Steve Ballmer did not found Microsoft. Non-Jews Bill Gates and Paul Allen did. They started the Company in 1976, five years after they began programming together while
attending Lakeside High School in Seattle where they had access to
the school's computer. Gates went off to Harvard where he and Ballmer
became good friends. Ballmer was a bright Jewish kid from Detroit
who scored a perfect 800 on his math SATs and who took it upon
himself to "socialize" Gates at Harvard - until Gates dropped out to
start Microsoft. About the same time, Paul Allen dropped out of
Washington State and together Gates and Allen launched the Company.
Gates tried to convince Ballmer to drop out as well, but instead, Ballmer stayed in school, going on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard in 1977. He worked for Proctor and Gamble for two years and
then entered Stanford Business School. Perhaps just to "fit in," he
then dropped out of Stanford Business School in 1980 after Gates had
made yet one more appeal for him to join Microsoft. Ballmer was the
Company's twenty-fourth employee.
Within three years Paul Allen was gone, the result of a bout with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Ballmer served first as the Company's financial disciplinarian and later became the number two guy, holding down
every senior job in the Company before being named President in 1998
and CEO in 2000. Known for his determination and salesmanship,
Ballmer has been vital to Microsoft's success.
Oracle: Larry Ellison is a University of Chicago dropout. He was one of the three (later four) partners who founded Oracle Corporation in 1977. Ellison, the leader, read an IBM article
about a new kind of software termed a "relational database." Then
commonly acknowledged as a revolutionary new way to build a database,
no one, not even at IBM, thought it was commercially viable. Ellison
disagreed and with $2,000, the partners began developing the
software, using cash generated from consulting projects to augment
the $2,000.
Of the four founders, two later left the company and one died. But from the start, it was Ellison that was, and still is, the driving force behind Oracle. "Relentless," "determined," and "ruthless" are
among terms commonly used to describe him. He has been schooled in
Japanese approaches to business where anything less than 100 percent
market share is not enough.
His strong ego is characterized by the titles of two books about him. The first is titled, "The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison." It is the first line of an old Silicon Valley joke for
which the punch line is "God does not think he is Larry Ellison." The
second book is Everyone Else Must Fail, for which the preamble is
"It is not good enough that I should succeed."
Ellison was born to an unmarried Jewish teenage mother and an Italian-American air force pilot father, but he grew up with an aunt, and an uncle who constantly put young Larry down saying he would
never amount to anything. Harvard Business School's Entrepreneur of
the Year in 1990, the 2004 Forbes' 400 lists Ellison as the world's
ninth wealthiest person.
Ellison has devoted roughly half a billion dollars to charities, particularly a medical foundation focused mostly on infectious diseases in the third world and diseases of aging. In mid 2005, he
also pledged $115 million to Harvard University.
Intel: As noted in the Andrew Grove bio, Intel was formed in 1968 by non-Jews Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore who recruited Grove to be their co-founder and third employee. Their
established reputations and ability to raise the needed $2.5 million
from venture capitalist Arthur Rock financed the Company, Noyce
headed up sales and Marketing, Moore R&D, while Grove headed
manufacturing and product development. Grove disciplined the
organization to set and reach goals and he made the critical
decisions, such committing Intel to the microprocessors which made
Intel the huge success it is.
Lotus: Mitch Kapor did not invent the spreadsheet, but his software program, Lotus 123, was the first application to spawn huge demand for personal computers. Visicalc, an earlier
spreadsheet program created by Jew Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston in
1982, was available on several early computers including the Apple II
a few years before Lotus 123 arrived. But Lotus 123 had many more
features, was easier to use, and had far better graphics. It provided
the compelling reason for consumers to buy personal computers and
demand was so strong, Lotus grossed $53 million in its first year and
$156 million by 1984. Kapor went on to create other major software
programs including Lotus Agenda.
eBay: Jeff Skoll did not create eBay, non-Jew Pierre Omidyar did in 1993. For Omidyar, born to French and Iranian parents, creating an on-line auction Web-site was a Labor Day weekend
hobby project. For its first couple of years, it was simply a free
Web-site Omidyar ran on his own home page along with several other of
his Web page creations. During the first few months, he tried to
recruit Skoll, a Jewish French-Canadian he met through friends, to
become his partner. Skoll turned him down, choosing to remain at
Stanford Business School.
In early 1996, Omidyar's Internet service provider began charging him $250 a month to host the site. Omidyar was forced to start charging a fee, which he passed along to the site's users based on
the sale price of auction items. As the checks started rolling in
Omidyar realized he needed help. Again, he approached Skoll. This
time, after a few months of consulting for eBay, Skoll signed on as
its first full time employee and President.
Skoll grew up in Canada and showed early signs of being a driven entrepreneur. At twelve, he was selling Amway products door-to-door. After graduating from the University of Toronto with a 4.0 grade
point average, he set up two high tech companies before moving to
Palo Alto to enroll at Stanford Business School. Compensating for
Omidyar's easy going ways and enjoyment of programming, Skoll was the
driven leader who planned the business and made things happen. He
hired key people, established much of the culture, and constantly
pushed to build the business.
The result is the number one auction Web site in the world. It grossed $3.9 billion in 2004, netted $936 million and was worth $53 billion by mid 2005, all of which made both Omidyar and Skoll very
wealthy. Skoll has since left eBay and now devotes the bulk of his
time to philanthropic activities, particularly his Skoll Foundation
to which he has donated $250 million. The Foundation supports social
entrepreneurs working to effect lasting positive social changes
worldwide. In 2003, Skoll won recognition from Business Week magazine
as "one of the most innovative philanthropists of the past decade"
InterActive Corp (IAC): Barry Diller has made a career of corporate transformations. He started in the mail room at the William Morris Agency in his early 20s, and at age 24, moved to
ABC-TV. Within three years, he was Vice President of Feature Films
and Program Development. In that job he inaugurated ABC's Movie of
the Week, the most popular movie series in television history. At ABC
Diller pioneered highly profitable "made-for-television" films which
focused on social issues such as homosexuality, the Vietnam War and
drugs.
In 1974, following that success (and still only 32), he was named President of Paramount Pictures. At Paramount, he oversaw creation of the hit television series: Cheers, Taxi, and Laverne and Shirley,
and hit movies including: Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saturday Night
Fever and Grease. Ten years later he moved to Twentieth Century-FOX
where in 1985, after Rupert Murdoch took over, he launched Fox as the
fourth television network. By 1990, Diller had Fox producing five
nights of prime time television with such popular shows as: The
Simpsons, Married With Children, Cops and America's Most Wanted.
Diller quit Fox to purchase a stake in QVC, the cable shopping network, and from there he launched an unsuccessful bid to take over Paramount. Sumner Redstone's Viacom beat him out. Shortly thereafter,
in 1995, non-Jew John Malone recruited Diller to leave QVC, invest
in and run Liberty Media's Silver King Communications, which was
broadcasting the Home Shopping Network. Diller later merged Home
Shopping into Silver King.
Through a blinding series of name changes, strategic redirections and $8 billion worth of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and investments in more than 45 companies, Diller created what is now
called Interactive Corp (IAC), the fifth major Internet Company,
(behind Google, Amazon, e-Bay, and Yahoo). Little known to the
general public, IAC controls such prominent Internet names as:
Expedia, Hotels.com, Lending Tree, Hotwire.com, Evite, Citysearch and
Ticketmaster.
Over the years, Diller has served as a director of Coca Cola and the Washington Post, Trustee of New York University, member of the Executive Board for Medical Sciences at UCLA, member of the Board of
Councilors of USC's School of Cinema-Television and a member of the
Board of the Museum of Television and Radio.
Yahoo: Terry Semel did not create Yahoo. Non-Jews Jerry Yang and David Filo did in 1994, as a hobby, while pursuing their electrical engineering PhD's at Stanford. In those halcyon,
"early bubble" days, Yahoo went public within two years. It was then,
and still is today, regarded as one of the major Internet successes
of all time, but along the way, it hit a bump in the road. In 2001,
Yahoo lost $93 million on revenues of $717 million. The stock
tanked and new talent was needed to avert a melt down.
That is when Terry Semel arrived. Semel had 24 years at Warner Brothers where he had been instrumental in building the Company from $1 billion to $11 billion in annual revenues. Semel quickly pushed
Yahoo's marketing, consumers' services and acquisitions and by 2003,
he had turned the company around. In 2004, Yahoo made $1.6 billion
under his leadership.
Qualcomm: Irwin Jacobs is listed as one of seven Qualcomm founders, but by any measure, he has been the "essential man" from Qualcomm's 1985 inception till now.
Qualcomm created and controls Code-Division Multiple Access (CDMA), a major wireless telecommunications technology. It is the most widely used wireless calling technology in the United States,
(47 percent market share) used by such carriers as Verizon, Cingular,
and Sprint. Around the world, 212 million wireless phones already
utilize Qualcomm technology and as 3G, the next generation of
wireless, is deployed, Qualcomm is expected to become the
international market leader as well.
Jacobs grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He was a mediocre musician, but an excellent student earning a bachelors degree from Cornell and a Masters and a Doctor of Science degree from
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He taught at MIT and the
University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 1959 to 1972.
While teaching, he wrote a still used college text, Principles of Communications Engineering, and in 1969, co-founded LINKABIT, a company he describes as his initial move towards becoming an
"academic dropout." That finally happened in 1972 when he became
LINKABIT's full time President and Chairman. The Company pioneered
satellite TV receiver technology (VideoCipher) and was the first to
commercially introduce Time Division Multiplex Access (TDMA), the
predecessor technology to CDMA. Jacobs built LINKABIT to 1,400
employees, before merging it with M/A-COM and he served on that Board
until 1985.
Initially, Qualcomm did research and development and some manufacturing for wireless companies while it built the largest satellite-based messaging service used by trucking companies to
manage their fleets. That service was quickly overshadowed, however,
by CDMA. By 2004, CDMA was generating over $5 billion in annual
revenues.
All of this has made Jacobs (and his fellow founders) quite wealthy. Jacobs has responded with major philanthropy. He and his wife have given $110 million to the San Diego Symphony (hearkening
back to his days as a mediocre musician), another $110 million went
to the UCSD to "support the other faculty that are currently doing
the teaching," $7 million went to the Salk Institute, and millions
more has gone to support the San Diego Food Bank and historic New
Bedford. Both he, and fellow Qualcomm founder Andrew Viterbi now have
schools of engineering named after them, Jacobs at UCSD and Viterbi
and the University of Southern California.
RealNetworks: Ron Glaser takes credit for creating the first technology to "stream" audio, video, and other digital content, such as music and games, to computers. He founded
RealNetworks in 1994 to capitalize on the technology.
Fresh out of Yale with degrees in economics and computer sciences, Glaser joined Microsoft in 1983 where he rose, over his ten years there, to become Vice President of Multimedia and Consumer Systems.
He left Microsoft in 1994 and shortly thereafter, says he downloaded
Mosaic, an early version of the Netscape Internet browser. He
immediately saw the potential to augment the browser with
"streaming." He founded RealNetworks and was soon able to take it
public. It became a hot Internet stock and, for a time, Glaser was a
billionaire.
Today, following the bursting of the Internet bubble and heightened competition with Microsoft's Media Player and Apple's Quicktime, RealNetworks continues to post operating losses and it is
taking on Microsoft in court. Like earlier Federal and state lawsuits
against Microsoft, Glaser's company claims Microsoft competes
unfairly by bundling its Mediaplayer into its software. Win or lose,
RealNetworks has sufficient cash to finance itself for some time and
thus remain a major Internet force, particularly as the downloading
of music and games becomes ever more prolific. If RealNetworks
succeeds, Glaser will rejoin the ranks of billionaires who hit it big
with their Internet technology innovations.
Broadcast.com & HDNet: Mark Cuban grew up poor, the son of Russian Jewish emigrants in blue collar Pittsburgh. He was a bright student who was also considered something of a hustler
with his native selling ability (selling garbage bags, greeting cards
and magazines, all door-to-door, from the time he was 12.) At the
University of Indiana he started a chain letter and gave disco
dancing lessons to pay for school.
After graduating in 1983 he started a computer consulting firm, MicroSolutions, though he neither owned, nor knew much about, computers. Self-taught by having to learn to perform on the promises
he made to customers, he built the Company to revenues of $30 million
a year before selling it to Compuserve. He made himself wealthy in
the process.
He then "kicked back" for a few years, before returning in 1995, with partner Todd R. Wagner (not Jewish), to create Broadcast.com. It pioneered radio and television broadcasting over the Internet. Cuban
and Wagner soon took it public and, in 1999, sold it to Yahoo for
$5.7 billion. Cuban and Wagner were billionaires.
His attention then shifted to his ownership of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. Cuban is a brash, avid, courtside presence whose outbursts have cost him an estimated $1 million in fines. At
the same time, his savvy marketing and recruiting of top talent has
converted the Mavericks from a perennial loser to a contender.
Cuban also launched HDNet, a high definition television broadcast network available on satellite, cable, and selected over the air high definition broadcast stations. He and Wagner also purchased Landmark
theaters, a large U.S. chain of "art-house" movie theaters which
will air the high definition movies he is producing and the films he
has contracted six major studios to convert from film to digital.
Measures of entrepreneurial success
One measure of entrepreneurial success is provided by the Fortune "40 Under 40" annual list of the wealthiest young Americans, nearly all of them self made. Though entrepreneurial success is not simply
about wealth, it is one scorecard. The Fortune's 2004 list is
included as Exhibit 16a. While it includes thirteen athletes and
entertainers, the remaining twenty-seven are successful young
entrepreneurs, mostly from high technology companies they started or
led. Of the twenty-seven, at least six are Jewish. Three of them are
among the top five and five of them among the top ten. In order, the
six include: #1 Michael Dell, #3 Jeff Skoll, #5 Sergey Brin, #9 Dan
Snyder, #10, Marc Benioff, and #17 Jerry Greenberg. Statistically, at
two percent of the U.S. population, Jews would be lucky if even one
of the twenty-seven was Jewish. At 22 percent, the result is ten
times what one would expect.
The Forbes 400 corroborates the Fortune list. (Exhibit 16b) Of the year 2004 ranking, at least 25 percent of the "400" are Jewish. And like the Fortune "40 Under 40," many of them made their wealth as
entrepreneurs who started successful businesses. Prominent among the
first twenty-five are #9 Michael Dell, #10 Lawrence Ellison, and #11
Steven Balmer. As with the Fortune 40, the performance defies
expectations. We would expect perhaps eight Jews among the 400, the
actual figure (at least 102) is twelve times that.
OMG, A Jewish History of the InternetDid you know that the internet is Jewish? Yeah...Moses got the Torah from HaShem on Mt. Sinai and HaShem told Moses that his brother Aaron and his descendants would be Kohenim forever. Now a "Kohen" is
a priest and the story of the internet involves a Jewish priest, a
Jewish painter, a Jewish Scotsman and a Jewish sugar merchant living
high in the mountains...well sort of...In 1972, at the International Computer Communication Conference, Robert Kahn (a kohen) was able to connect 40 different computers revealing his work to the public for the first time. Just three years
later David Farber (whose Yiddish family name means “painter”)
worked to create a primitive kind of email system. Within the next
twenty years the internet that we now know and love was born. In 2003
MySpace was launched and by 2006 it had become the largest social
networking site in the United States. MySpace added a new dimension
to how we communicate and share information with our friends, family
and even religious communities. The website was co-founded by Tom
Anderson. Although Tom’s last name reflects his father’s Scottish
heritage, he and his mother are Jewish and he was raised in a
messianic Jewish household. At the age of 14 Tom was a computer
hacker working his mischief under the tag name Lord Flathead (not a
Jewish name). He lead a team of hackers that were able to brake in
to Chase Manhattan Bank computers, he tampered with banking records
and left a message saying that unless he was given free use of the
system he would wipeout the records. He must have been praying
because he was never charged with the crime :) The website Tom would
later become famous for inspired a 23-year-old Mark Zuckerberg (a
Jewish name meaning “sugar mountain”) to create another social
networking site called Facebook. Things are looking sweeter then a
pile of sugar for Zuckerberg because Facebook has made him over a
billion dollars and more people can be found on his networking site
then in the entire country of Japan.…So we see that many key players in the field of computer technologies are our fellow tribesmen. The internet itself has even been compared to the Talmud…layers upon layers of commentary dealing
with issues from personal hygiene to oven construction. However the
internet is only truly comparable to the Talmud if it’s dialogue
eventually returns to G-dly matters. The Talmud finds a way to
elevate even mundane and seemingly secular matters to a level of
Torah. We should do the same with our technologies, only then do they
become truly Jewish....
By Larry Kuperman
July 29, 2007
The question of how many Jews there are begs the definition of "What is a Jew?" and also "Who is a Jew?" Questions that have been asked many a time.....mostly by other Jews. Being a Secular Jew
myself, I like the most liberal, inclusive definition that
includes....well ME. The biggest number that you will see is about 18
million Jews. This works out to something like 1/4 of one per cent
of the world's population. So you would expect that our impact on the
Internet would be proportional to our numbers....
Not so, bubbala. (A term of endearment, darling. Can you feel me virtually pinching your cheek? In a nice way.) The impact of Jews far outweighs their numbers. Lets look at "Who's A Yid?"
Larry Page and Sergey Brin, founders of Google. Larry Page's mom, Gloria Page, is Jewish. Sergey Brin was born in Moscow, Russia, to Jewish parents, Michael and Eugenia, who fled to America for
religious freedom.
Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, while he was a student at Harvard University. It was originally going to be limited to Harvard students, but expanded quickly. Zuckerberg saw the potential in the
site and sought capital. He turned to Peter Thiel, a co-founder of
Paypal and, not-so-coincidentally, also Jewish. Facebook is often
rumored to be up for sale. How much is Facebook worth? Let me refer
that to Mr. Thiel: "Facebook's internal valuation is around $8
billion based on their projected revenues of $1 billion by 2015."
Founder Mark Zuckerberg is 23, or as we like to say, 10 years past
his Bar Mitzvah.
Robert Kevin Rose is, comparatively, an old man at age 30. He is best known for founding Digg.com. Robert lost his job during the burst of the Dot Com bubble, ended up working as a production
assistant on the show The Screen Savers He began appearing on air and
stepped in as host after Leo Laporte left TechTV. On November 1,
2004, he started a site that combined social bookmarking, blogging,
RSS into arguably the premier tech news site. Today Digg is rated
among the 100 most popular sites on the web.
Scott Blum has been referred to as the "Sam Walton of e-commerce." Leaving a successful career as a shoe salesman as a youth, he founded Microbanks, a company that sold add-on memory modules for
Macintosh computers. Before his 21st birthday, he sold Microbanks to
Sentron Technology in San Diego for $2.5 million in cash. He would
then co-found Pinnacle Micro with his father. Leaving there under a
cloud of dubious accounting practices (he paid no penalty and
admitted no guilt) he would go on to found Buy.com. He left before
went public, returned to take it back private and it is now his baby.
RealNetworks is not the most beloved company in the world, nor is Real Player a favorite product. But there is no question that CEO and Founder Rob Glaser has been influential. When he founded Real
Networks in 1994, at age 31, he was already a millionaire from his
days at Microsoft. He has had a major impact on the Internet.
Certainly also worth mentioning are Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, whose mother is Jewish; Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, who was born on the Lower East Side of New York to a Jewish mother
and raised by his great-aunt and great-uncle in Chicago; and Phillipe
Kahn, founder of Borland.
What would the Internet be like with Google, PayPal, Facebook, Digg.com, Buy.com? It would be very, very different.
photo:Lagos, with a population set to reach 12.4 million, should, by 2015, overtake Cairo as Africa's largest city. Photograph: James Marshall/Corbis
The breakneck transformation of a rural population into a predominantly urban one is neither good nor bad on its own, says UN-Habitat, the Nairobi-based agency that monitors the world's built environment. But in a report it implored African countries to plan their cities better, to avoid mega-slums and vast areas of deprivation developing across the continent. "The pattern is ... oceans of poverty containing islands of wealth. Conditions in African cities are now the most unequal in the world. They are already inundated with slums and a tripling of urban populations could spell disaster, unless urgent action is initiated today. This situation threatens stability and also entire nations," it said.
Cairo is now Africa's largest urban area, with 11 million people, but the UN said that by 2015 it will have been overtaken by Lagos, with around 12.4 million inhabitants. By 2020 Kinshasa is expected to be the continent's second largest city and Luanda the fourth largest, projected to grow to more than 8 million by 2040.
The speed of growth of some cities "defies belief", said the report. Africa is expected to grow by more than 500 million people in the next 17 years, and a further 500 million by 2050. By then more than 60% of its population will live in cities. The population of Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, is expected to soar by more than 80%, from 1.9 million in 2010 to 3.4 million in 2020. The populations of nearly all sub-Saharan cities with more than a million people are expected to expand by an average of 32% in the next 10 years....
"Kinshasa is the fastest-growing city in absolute terms, with 4 million extra people expected, a 46% increase for its 2010 population of 8.7 million. Lagos is the second fastest, with a projected 3.5 million extra people, a 33.8% increase. Abuja, Bamako, Luanda, Lubumbashi and Nairobi are all expected to grow by between 47% and 50% in the next decade, while Dar es Salaam, Kampala, Mbuji-Mayi and Niamey are projected to grow between 50% and 57% ."
The report said providing food and water for the billion extra people on the continent by 2050 will be a huge problem, especially because Africa expects to be hit hard by climate change.
The UN urged governments to strike harder bargains with foreign countries eager to buy up land and water. "Governments should heed the warning bells of 2008 and seriously consider the potential effects of future urban food and water shortages. Significant amounts of African land and water resources are being purchased by foreign governments and foreign food processing corporations. Some even bring farm workers into Africa. Governments must bargain harder for better deals, which contribute to Africa's food and water security."
The authors suggested governments move much of their administrative business out of the capital cities. "They should consider relocating to their secondary cities all government departments and agencies that have no overriding reason to be located in the capital. Relocation would spread economic activity, relieve congestion and the pressures on urban land."
The report found many countries struggling to reverse the tide of slums. Egypt, Libya, Morocco have nearly halved their total number of urban slum dwellers, and Tunisia has eradicated them completely. Ghana, Senegal and Uganda have managed to reduce urban slum populations by more than 20%. More than 75% of Nigeria's population lived in slums in 1990, but that is now 61.9%. In South Africa, slum numbers dropped from 46.2% to 28.7% of the population between 1990 and 2010.
However, numbers of people living in slum conditions have grown in many cases because of the population increases. "As the fastest urbanising continent in the world, Africa is not only confronted with the challenge of improving the lives of slum dwellers but also the challenge of preventing the formation of new slums," said Joan Clos, executive director of UN-Habitat. "This will take considerable political will and financial resources. Most of all, it will require a commitment to strategic urban planning so that the needs of the poor will be met."
African population
In a swift move to forestall an apparent dramatic scene to re enact the Uzoma Okere Assault case by Naval Boss Arogundade which cumulated in the pay off granted by a court in the sum of 100million naira
The Lagos State House of Assembly on Monday declared i
its intention to sue an actress, Mrs. Ufuoma Ejenabor, for trying to extort money from the House.
Speaker of the Assembly, Mr. Adeyemi Ikuforiji, stated this through his Chief of Staff, Mr. Segun Olusesi, while reacting to the alleged assault of Ejenabor by his aides on October 29.
Olusesi said he was driving in the convoy directly behind the pilot vehicle when Ejenabor suddenly emerged from the left and in an attempt to force herself into the speaker's convoy, hit the rear left of the bumper of the pilot vehicle with her right front bumper.
Olusesi also accused Ejenabor of damaging her own car by deliberately hitting the speaker's official Lexus Jeep.photos Hon. Adeyemi Ikuforiji Uzoma Okere and Self confessed Uhrobo Witch Ufuoma Ejenabor
He claimed that nobody assaulted her in any form and the photographs of her car as contained in newspaper reports could best be described as "insurance fraud and attempt to extort and blackmail the House and the speaker."
Ejenabor had alleged that her car would cost N595, 000 to repair.
The incident was, however, recorded by the aides of the Speaker and it showed part of the events that transpired.
Olusesi said immediately they noticed Ejenabor's belligerence, the Speaker ordered his aides to begin to record the events so that they would not have a scandal in their hands.
The recording showed Ejenabor hysterically shouting at the aides that she had been beaten, her phone seized and they were in trouble for damaging her car.
"You don jam bad luck! You don jam Urhobo witch. They should beat me o! They should beat me, Urhobo girl! You have to beat me. Shebi una get power,!" she screamed.
Olusesi explained that from the footage, she still had her bag intact and her phone was still with her. He also said that the video evidence showed that there was no damage to her car as was exhibited in the photographs.
Olusesi explained that the convoy was coming from the burial of the wife of a member of the House and was heading for Lagos University Teaching Hospital where another member, Mr. Rotimi Sotomiwa, lay ill. Sotomiwa died a few days after the incident.
In her reaction, Ejenabor said that her Blackberry phone was still with the speaker's aides and would be tracked.
"They beat me to collect my phone. My I-pod was in the car. They ransacked the car and took all things. They said I drove into their convoy.
Why would I do that? It happened during the day and it was on a highway. We can have a forensic check of my car and their car. Forensics don't lie," she said
House of Ginjah crumbles
The singer cum producer Gabriel Amanyi popularly known asTerry G has disbanded his clique,House of Ginjah. According to a press statement from the singer, who recently signed a management deal with Now Music, three members of the in-group have been asked to leave the Amanyi’s T.G.P record label.
“The trio (IQ, Rakwell and Prince Banton) have no contractual agreement with the label and have been asked to leave by the label’s head ,” the release reads.The release also stated that the increasing responsibility of taking care of the group’s daily demands, improper marketing of the group’s debut album ‘8th Mainland Bridge’ and the new management deal Terry G signed with Now Music may not be unconnected with this recent development.
House of Ginjah is a quintet that includes the displaced trio, Terry G and his younger brother, Daniel Amanyi also known as D’ Money.D’Money will however remain on the label and his debut solo single is expected to be released soon..
